BLACKFOOT LANGUAGE

'Blackfoot' is the name of any of the Algonquian languages spoken by the Blackfoot tribe of Native Americans, who currently live in the northwestern plains of North America. Like the other Plains Algonquian languages, Blackfoot is often said to have diverged a great deal from Proto-Algonquian. It is significantly different both phonologically and, especially, lexically from the other languages in the family.^[1]
Like the other Algonquian languages, Blackfoot is typologically polysynthetic. Whorf hypothesized that it was oligosynthetic, but mainstream linguistics has rejected this.

Contents

Sounds

Consonants

Vowels

Writing System

Unicode table for Blackfoot

Notes

External links

References

Sounds

Consonants

Blackfoot has ten consonants, of which all but and can be phonemically long:^[2][3]

	Labial		Alveolar		Velar		Glottal
Stop
Fricative
Nasal
Semivowel

Blackfoot also has two affricates, , . The velar consonants become palatals and when preceded by front vowels.

Vowels

Blackfoot has a vowel system with three monophthongs, . Length is distinctive (''áak'o'kaawa'', "s/he will rope" vs. ''áak'oo'kaawa'', "s/he will sponsor a sundance"):^[4]23

	Front		Central		Back
Close
Close-Mid
Open

There are three additional vowels, called "diphthongs" in Frantz (1997). The first is pronounced before a long consonant, (or , in the dialect of the Blackfoot Reserve) before or , and elsewhere (in the Blood Reserve dialect; in the Blackfoot Reserve dialect).^[5] The second is pronounced before and elsewhere. The third is .^[6] The short monophthongs exhibit allophonic changes as well. and are raised to and respectively when followed by a long consonant, /i/ becomes in closed syllables.⁴
Blackfoot has a pitch accent system, meaning that every word has at least one high-pitched vowel, and high pitch is contrastive with non-high pitch (e.g., '''á'pss'i'wa'', "it's an arrow" vs. '''a'pss'í'wa'', "it's a fig").^[7] At the end of a word, non-high pitched vowels are devoiced.^3[8]

Writing System

Main articles: Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics

A script for Blackfoot was created by John William Tims in the 19th century. The script uses a symbol for each consonant+vowel combination. There is only one symbol for each consonant, but it is rotated to face different directions to indicate the vowel which goes with it. The consonant symbols appear to be loosely based on the latin alphabet, only made less symmetrical. Symbols for consonants without any vowels are based on the consonant symbol minus the stem.

Unicode table for Blackfoot

Syllabics	Unicode	Blackfoot
=	003D	-w-
ᐟ	141F	+i
ᐠ	1420	+u(o)
ᐡ	1421	N
ᐢ	1422	M
ᐤ	1424	P
ᐦ	1426	KH
ᐧ	1427	-s-
ᐨ	1428	T
ᑉ	1449	-y-
ᑊ	144A	H
ᑫ	146B	Pa
ᑭ	146D	Pe
ᑯ	146F	Pi
ᑲ	1472	Po
ᒉ	1489	Ma
ᒋ	148B	Me
ᒍ	148D	Mi
ᒐ	1490	Mo
ᒣ	14A3	Ta
ᒥ	14A5	Te
ᒧ	14A7	Ti
ᒪ	14AA	To
ᓭ	14ED	Sa
ᓯ	14EF	Se
ᓱ	14F1	Si
ᓴ	14F4	So
ᔈ	1508	S
ᔦ	1526	Ya
ᔨ	1528	Ye
ᔪ	152A	Yi
ᔭ	152D	Yo
ᖰ	15B0	E
ᖱ	15B1	I
ᖲ	15B2	O
ᖳ	15B3	A
ᖴ	15B4	We
ᖵ	15B5	Wi
ᖶ	15B6	Wo
ᖷ	15B7	Wa
ᖸ	15B8	Ne
ᖹ	15B9	Ni
ᖺ	15BA	No
ᖻ	15BB	Na
ᖼ	15BC	Ke
ᖽ	15BD	Ki
ᖾ	15BE	Ko
ᖿ	15BF	Ka
ᘁ	1601	K

Notes

1. Mithun (1999:335)
2. Blackfoot Pronunciation and Spelling Guide. Native-Languages.org. Retrieved 2007-04-10
3. Frantz, Don. The Sounds of Blackfoot. Retrieved 2007-04-11
4. Frantz (1997:1-2)
5. Frantz (1997:2)
6. Frantz (1997:2-3)
7. Frantz (1997:3)
8. Frantz (1997:5)

External links

★ Ethnologue report for Blackfoot

★ Blackfoot language

★ Don Frantz's page on the Blackfoot language

★ Blackfoot - English Dictionary: from Webster's Online Dictionary, the Rosetta Edition.

References

★ Blackfoot Grammar, , Donald G., Frantz, University of Toronto Press, 1997,

★ The Languages of Native North America, , Marianne, Mithun, Cambridge University Press, 1999,